Innovative internet governance model proposed

The State Administration for Market Regulation issued a draft document on tackling unfair competition in the internet market on Tuesday, soliciting public opinions.

According to the document, the administration proposes engaging other relevant government departments, organizations and individuals to take part in the supervision. This is an innovation compared with the current supervision system that is dominated by the administration itself.

The document urges lawmakers to focus more on resolving practical problems in making laws to address unfair competition and unfair transaction.

It also prohibits companies from using technological means to influence other companies’ operations through restricting transaction objects, sales regions and time and promotion means, and from imposing either-or choices to hamper and sabotage trade partners, as well as other behaviors harming fair market order.

These contents aim to prevent big internet companies from abusing their dominant status to thwart competition.

The document gets to the root causes of the unfair competition, and its to-the-point content should prove to be effective in resolving some pressing concerns. For instance, it bans companies from using technological means to illegally grab and use other companies’ data so as to replace their internet products or services completely or partly.

That means the administrative department has data crawlers in its sights, and it intends to draw a demarcation line between legal data mining and illegal data crawling with the document.

The document is also empowering the watchdog departments in places other than the places where the internet companies are registered to probe into suspected illegal behaviors of the companies.

Notably, the document stipulates that the misbehaving companies should disclose their rectification plans to society indicating what measures they will take to eliminate the consequences of their wrongdoings after being punished for them by the administrative departments. That can enable the public to better supervise the companies.

The introduction of an expert observer panel is another highlight of the document as members of the panel can evaluate whether the companies’ behaviors can be justified.

It is hoped that the public can contribute more constructive opinions to make the document more pertinent to realizing its aims.